When you have visitors up here it is compulsory to "do" some of the famous archeological sites. To fulfil our obligations in this respect we managed to fit The Stones of Stennes, The Ness of Brodgar, Scara Brae, Barnhouse and Maeshowe all into one day.
This is slightly worse than it sounds as with the exception of Scara Brae, they are all within sight of each other.
Scara Brae is the one that everybody wants to see and it is indeed remarkable but now I think that it is over manicured and seems almost like an artificial garden folly for some large mansion.
When John and I first came here about 45 years ago there was nothing at Scara Brae and no tourists so you could just walk in and sit inside the houses alone getting a feel for the scale and comfort that the inhabitants would have had. It seemed real and it was easy to imagine the inhabitants from 5000 years ago living there.
Now however there is a massive visitor centre and cafe and the houses are all "no go" areas so you just walk round carefully mown paths round the top and look down into them. Not really magical at all.
Maeshowe however still lives up to expectations even though it is now also very organised. It is very impressive and remarkably well built and the runic inscriptions from the vikings who broke into it are interesting and witty. Just like any modern soldier putting graffitti on a wall while sheltering from the weather.
The Ness of Brodgar is a new excavation just to the south of the ring and is really unusual. Some have called it a neolithic cathedral although the archeologists have not decided what it is, apart from the usual "ritual or ceremonial".
The stonework on some of it is very fine, both inside and out so it would seem that it is obviously very important for so much effort to be lavished on it.They have also found painted stones in the walls of some of the buildings. Apparently this is the first time that coloured decoration has been found on buildings of this age.
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